Pakistani cinema had a night to remember at the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (MISAFF) in Canada, where two of the country’s most talked-about films of 2026 took home top honours. Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary ‘Hanging by a Wire’ received the Sabeen Mahmud Award for Courage in Cinema, while Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s ‘Lali’ emerged as one of the festival’s biggest winners with three awards.
The MISAFF win arrives at a momentous time for ‘Hanging by a Wire’: just days earlier, the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee named it the country’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards — the first time Pakistan has ever submitted a documentary in that category. The selection was announced during the film’s premiere at MISAFF itself. Naqvi’s film reconstructs the gripping August 2023 Battagram cable-car emergency, in which eight people — including six schoolchildren — were left suspended hundreds of feet above a ravine for hours before a dramatic rescue operation saved them all.
‘Lali’, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year as the first all-Pakistani production to bow at the Berlinale, continued its dream festival run as MISAFF’s opening film. At the Canadian festival it collected the Special Jury Prize and the Best Sound Design Award, with Farazeh Syed taking home Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Khoosat’s darkly comic Punjabi-language drama — starring Mamya Shajaffar as Zeba, a young bride haunted by superstition, and Channan Hanif — has now travelled from Berlin to London, Los Angeles and Washington DC.
For an industry still rebuilding its theatrical audience at home, the international recognition carries extra weight: ‘Hanging by a Wire’ premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance 2026 and streams on Paramount+ from October 28, putting Pakistani storytelling firmly on the global map.
